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The Most Expensive Person in Your Business Isn't Always the Most Obvious Problem

Filed Under: Advisory and compliance, Change management, Culture, External HR Support, HR essentials, Leadership

Day 21 of 31 Days of Better Workplaces —

There’s a particular kind of person in some small and medium businesses that the owner is aware of, uncomfortable about, and quietly protecting. They deliver. Their numbers are good. Clients like them — or at least clients never complain about them.

And everyone else on the team walks on eggshells around them. Including, if we’re being honest, the owner.

This is the toxic high performer. And the reason they’re so costly isn’t the behaviour itself — it’s what the behaviour does to everyone else.
What most SME leaders don’t realise is how much authority this person has accumulated outside the formal structure. Other team members have learned to read the room through them. Newer employees figure out the unwritten rules by watching how this person operates and what they can get away with. Their reaction to a business decision — an eye roll in a meeting, a dismissive comment in the kitchen — can quietly undermine more leadership communication than any formal initiative can build.
In short: they are often the real ideological centre of your workplace. The culture revolves around managing them, accommodating them, and working around the discomfort they create.
The performance case for keeping them has been made in your head many times. I understand it. But have you ever calculated the other side of the ledger? The people who left because of them. The ones who quietly reduce their output because ambition feels risky. The cost of a workplace where everyone performs compliance rather than genuine engagement.
Toxic high performers are a culture risk that shows up in the financials long before it shows up anywhere obvious.
Most businesses don’t act until there’s an incident they can’t ignore. By then, the culture has already been shaped around the problem.

 

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